Sunday, February 26, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Genesis 9:8-17; Mark 1:9-15
Sermon: Pathway Into the Wilderness, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: God does not leave us alone in wilderness
Worship
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Mark 9:2-9
Sermon: A Sacrament of Failure, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Mystery of transfiguration leading to the cross
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Praise and Reflection, Mary Kay Parrish; The Sanctuary Bells, Nancy Hascall, director
- Anthem: Festival Te Deum, Op.32, Benjamin Britten; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Blessed Assurance, Knap/Bach, arr. Dobrinsski; The Sanctuary Bells, Nancy Hascall, director
- Postlude: Postlued on ‘Benedicimus Domino’, G. Visona;
Too Good To Be True?
Date: February 12, 2012
Title: “Too Good To Be True?”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14
“It’s too good to be true”. How many times have we said that? “It’s too good to be true”. This can’t be all there is to healing, or wholeness of life. This is too simple, it’s too easy, for real transformation, or real restoration. There has to be more to salvation in the Biblical understanding of whole life, full life, redeemed life. It seems too good to be true!
Poor Naaman’s got a problem. He’s sick – everybody can see that much is true. And he’s tried every known cure, he’s gone to every doctor in his hometown, he’s listened to every self-help guru on television. He’s even ordered snake-oil off the internet! And nothing has worked.
So here he is, in desperation, visiting the prophet Elisah in some backwater town in Israel. Sure, it seems like crazy thing to do. His friends are shaking their heads and wagging their tongues, thinking “Old Naaman’s really gone round the bend on this one!” But why not give it a go? Nothing else has worked.
But still… it is too good to be true, what the prophet says. In fact, it’s so easy, such a simple prescription, that Naaman is outraged. Instead of performing some elaborate healing ritual, instead of offering up elaborate hand motions and mysterious liturgical wordings, Elisha merely tells Naaman to go and wash himself in the Jordan River.
This is worse than “Take two aspiring and call me in the morning”. Doesn’t this prophet know what a VIP is standing at his door? And how could such a simple thing as a bath bring about the kind of healing, and offer the kind of hope that Naaman so desperately needs?
Naaman’s got a problem, all right. And it has nothing at all to do with leprosy. Naaman is like the man in the old joke who is caught in a flood, nad goes up on his roof, where he prays to God to rescue him. Person after person comes by in the rowboat, offering to take the man to safety. “No thanks”, he says each time, “I know God is going to save me.”
Finally the flood rises over him and the man drowns. When he gets to heaven, he loudly complains, “I prayed and prayed, God, but you didn’t save me!” And God sighs a bit, then answers, “I sent four rowboats and you didn’t get into any of them.”
Naaman’s got a problem like the man in the flood. And maybe like me. You see, we also experience God’s grace and think, “This can’t be it… it’s too simple”. We imagine there must be something more to it than what we are offered, and so we wonder “Maybe I need to wait a little longer, pray a little harder, ask a little louder.” We think it is too good to be true!
And then we watch rowboat after rowboat drift on by without us. Leonard Sweet put it this way:
“We don’t claim the healings that do come to us. Instead, we set the evidentiary bar so high for a miracle of healing that a dozen miracles are given to us and we do not notice them at all. For us, a miracle has to be magic, full of special effects, before we pay any attention.”
But most of the miracles of God’s grace – the miracles which transform our thinking, or the miracles which heal our spirits, or the miracles which save our dignity and liberate our potential – most of these miracles are like the rowboats in the story. They come along regularly, sometimes even in response to our prayers. But as Sweet reminds us, “The trick is, you have to get into them to get the full effect.!”
One of the things I really like to practice is Improvisational Theater. It’s not that I am all that comfortable on stage. It is certainly not that I think I can give up my day job and make it as a “ham”. No, I like Improv precisely because it pushes me out of my own comfort zone, and it teaches me some valuable lessons about grace.
You see, in order to do well in Improv, you have to learn these lessons. First, you have to learn to be present in the present moment. You cannot be mutli-tasking – writing up your grocery list or nursing your grudge or rehashing your latest success or failure. You have to be completely present in the present moment.
Secondly, Improv requires that you learn to listen deeply. You have to practice the kind of listening which is focused and clear, in order to hear just what has been said, and nothing else.
Third, to succeed in Improv you have to learn to let go of your own agenda. It really doesn’t matter how I think the scene “should” unfold. It really doesn’t matter how much planning or posing I have done, or how much control I have imagined myself to have. I have to remember that I am not in the scene (or for that matter, in this life) all by myself, and that letting go of my own agenda is essential if I really want to play.
And finally, Improv teaches me to keep moving the story forward. There is nothing worse than stopping the story in its tracks, or letting it die an undignified death. There is movement in Improv just like there is movement in life – and the point is to keep it moving forward, or to get out of the way.
In Improvisational Theater – and in life – our path to success, or to healing or to wholeness may not be a straightforward one. It is not that God requires the twists and turns. It is not that God needs our contortions of impossible movements, or even the smoke and mirrors of illusion. But that we invariably do.
Anything as simple and straightforward as “God loves me, and Christ fills me, just as I am, without one plea” we think must be too good to be true! And so we hang onto our own agendas, we live or die by our own scripts and watch all those rowboats keep drifting right on by!
Even those closest to Jesus – his own disciples then and now – may understand Naaman better than we understand God. “Jesus”, we say, “Couldn’t you act a little more like a king? Couldn’t you perform the way we have scripted you to perform? What’s wrong with a little pomp and circumstance…aren’t you carrying this humility thing a little too far? You said yourself that God would send an army of angels to aid you and all you had to do was ask… why not ask?”
Yet Jesus understands that healing and wholeness of life is not about power and prestige as much as it is about truth. It is in John’s Gospel that Jesus tells his disciples how he is going to die and then goes on to reassure them, “You will know the Truth; and the Truth will set you free.”
As if to suggest that we will not be healed or made whole in this life by Christ the King, unless we are willing to first get into the boat with Christ the Truth. So Naaman’s journey of healing is a good example for all of us. Naaman’s story could be our story. For like him, we want to experience life’s fullest joys. We want to live in God’s deepest serenity. We want to be healed and made whole. And just like Naaman, we have to remain open to all God’s possibilities… whether they show up as rowboats or helicopters or whole flotillas of yachts. Or whether they show up just as you and me letting go of our agendas long enough to move God’s story forward.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once commented that “Full experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental.” Whereupon some one in the audience, undoubtedly thinking they were very clever, asked, “Rabbi, if God-realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?” And the Rabbi wisely replied, “In order to be as accident-prone as possible!”
To be as accident-prone as possible. That is why we are here. That is why we continue to pray, to study, to learn, and to grow. Naaman almost blew it. He was ready to do anything in order to be healed. Ready for anything, except perhaps the letting go of his own agenda long enough to accept the simple thing God asked of him. And it took a servant suggesting “why not?” for Naaman to see the possibility right in front of his face.
We can be that servant for each other. We can be those servants for the world around us, today. Because we are in the process of becoming as “accident-prone” as possible. Hey! The waters are rising all around us. Don’t miss the boat! Amen.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: 2 Kings 5:1-14
Sermon: Too Good to Be True?, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: We make faith too difficult/complex
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Allegretto (Symphonie #5), C. M. Widor (1844 – 1937); Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Introit: Jesus Loves Me, John Ness Beck; The Cherubs and Sound Seekers Choirs, Vanessa Unger & Ronnee Edwards, directors
- Anthem: Lord, Listen To Your Children Praying, Ken Medema; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Deposuit Potentes from Magnificat, J. S. Bach; Carl Moe, soloist
- Postlude: Psalm 19, Bendetto Marcello (1686 – 1739);
Carl Moe, the offertory soloist today, is one of our two Music Interns. The Music Intern Program is funded from interest from the Allen Endowment and by contributions from individuals and families. Carl is a student at Portland State University where he is studying vocal performance.
The Most Important of All
Date: February 5, 2012
Title: “The Most Important of All”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 12:28-34
I was driving down Highway 26 recently when I saw a car with a very old bumper sticker on it. This was a sticker popular several years ago (you’ve probably seen one just like it), and it read “Honk if you love Jesus.” Another driver near me honked. Then, a little farther down the road, I happened to see another bumper sticker. This one read, “Tithe if you love Jesus. Any fool can honk!”
This experience reminded me of when I went to Bolivia as a part of a Volunteer in Mission Team. One day we took a trip high up into the mountains, above Cotani Alto, to visit a small mission hospital. It wasn’t much of a place; they didn’t have many supplies, and they only had one visiting nurse to care for people from several villages in a 20 mile radius.
As we were touring the place, we stopped to look in to one room, where there was a man, covered in running sores, emaciated and obviously very sick. There, by his bed, was a volunteer, spooning a thin porridge into this man’s mouth, and catching it with the spoon when it ran down his chin.
One of the people in our group didn’t really know what he was saying when involuntarily he commented, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars!” Whereupon the volunteer looked up from her labors and quietly remarked, “Neither would I.”
True love. It doesn’t come easy. It is not enough just to honk and say “I love Jesus.” It is not enough just to see pain’s face and then to turn away. It is not enough just to assume that everyone knows they are welcome here, no matter what. It is not enough.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh put it this way:
“People talk about love as though it were something you could give, like an armful of flowers. And a lot of people do give love like that – just dump it down on top of you, a useless, strong-scented burden. I don’t think love is something you give…
Rather, it is a force that enables you to give other things. It is the motivating power which enables you to give strength and power, freedom and peace to others. It is not a result; it is a cause. Love is not a product; rather, it produces.”
True love is not a product – it produces. It is a force in you that enables you to give other things. When Jesus answers the scribe’s question about the commandments this morning, he sets in motion a re-forming, not only of faith, but also of love.
According to Jewish rabbinic tradition, there are 613 mozvot, or “commandments” in the five books of Moses. So which laws are weighty and essential? Which are peripheral and insignificant? It seems like a reasonable question to ask of Jesus. It is a reasonable question – and a logical one – to ask, if what we are after is a sense of our own priorities, our own direction, our own identity.
Dan Clendenin, in his commentary on the Mark text, points out:
“We all define ourselves, shape our identities and create our personas in any number of ways… Some define themselves by the intensity of their work, or the accumulation of their wealth. For others, sports, politics, the environment, sexual identity, ethnicity, or even their alma mater is what defines them the most.”
While these “identity markers” may help us to make sense of ourselves and our community, Clendenin reminds us that “They also have their down side. Sexual identity is a deeply human and powerful trait, but taken by itself as the only thing which defines us, and it becomes reductionistic. Likewise, ethnicity is a legitimate source of pride. But taken by itself, it can also be the source of toxic hatred and can even lead to genocide. Hard work is admirable, but we need to remember that life is far bigger than our work.”
So today we are celebrating “Reconciling Sunday” in this congregation. Today we lift up the courage and the witness of those who, 19 years ago, decided that First United Methodist Church of Portland, Oregon would refuse to put limits on God’s love, or on our sharing of that love. Today we rejoice in the diversity of this beloved community, and in all that we can accomplish when we come together here in God’s name.
But it is not enough just to pat ourselves on the back and decide we’ve made it. It is not enough just to rejoice and celebrate and decide we are done with the struggle, and that we can be content with ourselves just the way we are.
In Luke’s rendering of this Gospel story, Jesus not only answers the question of the most important commandment of all, he goes on to say “Do these, and you shall live.” (Luke 10:25-28). Do these (love God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself), Jesus says. He doesn’t say “memorize these”, or “recite these”. Jesus does not say “teach these”, or “think about these every day”. Jesus says do these, and you will find life and you will know what it truly means to live.
What it truly means to live as a Reconciling congregation I believe is to understand love is that force which enables us to give strength and power, freedom and peace to one another. It is to understand that love is the force which keeps us always ready to make room for one more neighbor – whether that neighbor looks like us, or not; whether that neighbor acts like us or not; whether that neighbor sounds like us, thinks like us, worships like us, or lives like us… or not.
Do these and you shall live. That Jesus asks a lot of us, doesn’t he? He is asking us not only to call ourselves “reconciling”. He is asking us to practice reconciliation. Jesus is asking us to practice bringing people together in love, to practice accepting one another, to practice making our actions consistent with our beliefs, and our lives compatible with Christ’s prioritizing the most important of all commandments.
And here’s the thing – that work can never be fully complete. That job will never be completely done. But don’t worry. If God asks a lot of us, God offers us even more. You remember how the prophet Isaiah puts it…
“Even youths shall faint and be weary; even the young shall fall exhausted. But they who wait for the Lord… (they who trust in God’s grace and practice God’s love)…they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint.”
True love – reconciling ministry – does not come easy. But it does come. For Jesus’ words You shall love the Lord your God…and your neighbor as yourself…in the end, become less a command than a promise. These words become a promise that on the weary feet of faith, and with the fragile wings of hope, you and I will finally learn to love. And then we will know what it is to truly live. Thanks be to God! Amen.
A note about our closing hymn, In the Midst of New Dimensions:
This hymn was written by Rev. Julian Rush, a United Methodist minister who served churches in Dallas, Denver, Boulder and Colorado Springs for 17 years, until he acknowledged his own identity as a gay man.
When he came out, the United Methodist church in Boulder decided he was no longer fit to be their minister, and stopped paying his salary. In 1981 Bishop Melvin Wheatley appointed Julian to St. Paul United Methodist Church in Denver. This was a small church, which already had a pastor and had very little money. But they decided to accept the appointment of Rev. Rush as a public gesture of support for the gay community, and as a statement about their commitment to social justice.
In 1984, St. Paul UMC became one of the first three churches in the nation to become a Reconciling Congregation, believing that all persons are children of God and are welcome in the church.
This hymn is Julian’s own record of the struggle to be honest and open, even in the face of rejection which came as a result of his integrity. Following the church’s inhospitable reaction to Julian, he wrote this loving and affirming hymn. What a powerful lesson for us all about what it means to love God – and to love our neighbors as ourselves.
(thanks to Paul Nickell for this brief hymn history)
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Isaiah 40: 21-31 and Mark 12:28-34
Sermon: The Most Important of All, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: “Success” not measured by the world’s standards, but by God’s
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Lilliburlero, Richard Purvis (1913-1994); Donna Parker, guest organist
- Anthem: Nunc Dimittis, Robert Scholz; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: The Wonders of the Universe, Marc’ Antonio Cesti; Deborah Benke, soloist and Nan Anderson, accompanist
- Postlude: Fanfare in D, Jacques Lemmens (1823-1881);
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Deuteronomy 18:15-20 Mark 1:21-28
Sermon: With Authority, Rev. Dr. Tom Rannells, preaching
Focus: How do we decide what is authoritative for us, and for our life of faith
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Allegro (Organ Concerto No. 5), G. F. Handel; Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, arr. Gustav Holst; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: The Lord Is My Shepherd, Samuel Liddle; Carol Young, soloist
- Postlude: Hymn to the Sun, Louis Vierne;
Who’s Calling, Please?
Date: January 22, 2012
Title: Who’s Calling, Please?
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M. L. Pritchard
Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-20; John 1:43-51
- Call waiting
- Caller ID
- Last call return (star 69) Continuous redial
- Voice messaging
- Call forwarding Selective call forwarding Call Trace
- Call rejection
- Speed dialing
- Priority calling
- 3-way calling
And the list goes on … these are just a few of the options available through our telephones today. It is quite a list … and may leave you wondering, “Whatever happened to plain old calling?”
Don’t get me wrong … I love my iphone … even when I find myself wondering if it is a good idea to have a phone that is smarter than me! And I love so many of my options …
I like being able to control what my phone sounds like when it rings (a marimba); I like the alter that sounds when I get a text message (it is called “Sherwood Forest” and sounds like a royal alert).
I like knowing who is calling and being able to choose whether to answer or wait for them to leave a message. I even like being able to silence my phone …or on very rare occasions, to turn it off altogether!
I like these options, and the illusion they create for me, as if somehow my phone will protect me from stress or worry, and its options will limit the disruptions or distractions of my life. It is as if being connected – wirelessly – means I will never again miss out on something good or exciting or true; as if being in control of my telephone means I can be in control of my life!
1But alas … all that is just an illusion. And sometimes, in the midst of the busiest day of the week, surrounded by noise and confusion – or perhaps, in the still, smallest hours of the night – God calls. And where are all my options then? Someone else reflected on the First Samuel story in this way:
“Long ago, even before the rotary phone, the boy Samuel faced this dilemma. Calls from God were rare. But as a child pledged to service in the temple of Yahweh at Shiloh, Samuel was called by name at all times of day and night.
On one particular night, the boy hears his name called and responds, “Hello? Yes? Here I am. What do you want?”
Now if you are Eli, you’re not sleeping that well when the boy comes trotting in to disturb you with this nonsense. Now even the pretense of slumber is gone; it’s just you and your premonitions, a vague sense of doom hanging over you, and the Lord is silent as only the Lord can be silent.
‘Prophets wouldn’t know a vision anymore if it bit them in the behind. So what’s eating this kid? Indigestion? Fleas? Those worthless, carousing sons of yours? No, that boy is sharp…’
If you’re Samuel, you think it must be the old man calling you. But the temple lamp hasn’t even burned out yet, too early for him to be calling for the vessel. He says he didn’t call? What?!
You suspect his eyesight isn’t the only thing fading fast. And there it is again… your name is definitely being called. And again he denies calling you…But then tells you what to do if it happens again.”
In our day, the word of the Lord seems widespread and visions of would-be prophets abound. There is no limit to those who call us by name. So how will we distinguish God’s call?
Where do you suppose Samuel would have ended up – how would the story have gone – if there had been no Eli telling him to listen again for God? Likewise, where will you and I end up, and how will our story go, if we do not help each other to go back and listen again for God’s love?
How will our story go – where will we end up – if we do not remind each other, of the truth which Margaret Shepherd puts into these words:
Sometimes, your only available transportation is a leap of faith!
A leap of faith. That is what Eli tells Samuel to take. That is what Philip wants Nathanael to risk. And that is what God is still offering to each and every one of us. It is no coincidence that Jesus was not a solo act. Do you remember how his first course of active ministry is to begin gathering a community of disciples around him? First it is two of John the Baptist’s followers; then Simon Peter, and Philip, and now Nathanael.
And for each of these disciples there is someone else helping them to see the truth, to hear the call, and to take the leap of faith, to climb on board that only available transportation.
Jesus was not a solo performer. And neither are we. Who’s calling please?
We need each other to identify God’s voice in the midst of the myriad voices we will hear today. We need each other to know who is calling us and why and to help us take the leap when we answer
I think of Gilda Radner’s famous Saturday Night Live sketch as the telephone operator … back when the phone company was just that …’THE phone company’. Do you remember how she would answer “Is this the party to whom I am speaking?”
When Nathanael is challenged to let go of his snobbish prejudice against Nazareth and its potential (can anything good come out of Nazareth), and when Jesus engages him in a Christological discourse about Messianic identity and the possibilities of discipleship, none of this is happening in a vacuum. Rather, the story unfolds as Nathanael is learning to follow, learning how to take that “only available transportation”… the leap of faith.
Christology – understanding the nature of Christ – unfolds for all of us in the course of discipleship. It is as we follow, it is as we answer that we figure out “who is calling, please?”
Kathleen Norris in her book Amazing Grace writes about the role of community in Christology in this way:
“All Christians are considered to have a call to what is commonly termed the priesthood of all believers; all Christians are expected to use their lives to reveal the grace of the Holy Spirit working through them.
It’s a tall order, to literally be a sacrament… and it helps to remember Jesus’ statement later on in the Gospel of John … You did not choose me; I chose you.”
Norris goes on to recount this bit of her personal faith story:
“It was January, bitterly cold and windy, on the day I joined the church, and I found that the sub-zero chill perfectly matched my mood. As I walked to church, into the face of that wind, I was thoroughly depressed. I didn’t feel much like a Christian and I wondered if I was making a serious mistake.
Before the service, the new members gathered with some of the elders. One was a man I’d never liked much. I’ll call him Ed. He’d always seemed ill-tempered to me, and also a terrible gossip, epitomizing the small-mindedness that can make small town life such a trial.
Standing awkwardly before our small group, Ed cleared his throat and mumbled, ‘I’d like to welcome you to the body of Christ.’
The minister’s mouth dropped open, as did mine. Neither of us had ever heard words remotely like this come from Ed’s mouth. Like distant thunder, the words made me more alert, attuned to further disruptions in the atmosphere. What had I gotten myself into?
I was astonished to realize, as the service began, that while I may never like Ed very much, I had just been commanded to love him. My own small mind had just been jolted, and the world seemed larger, opened in a new way.”
Ed’s words have power because they are words of Christian community. They are words which say to all of us welcome, here you are joined with us, here we will help you to take the leap of faith, as together we figure out “who’s calling, please?” They are words which remind us that we are in this together – no matter where we come from – and that God is calling from the most unexpected of places, all the time.
When I was a kid, the label Made in Japan signified a cheap trinket that cost little and was worth even less. It was a common term of derision, a way of saying that something was likely not made well and would not last long. But … by the time I graduated from college, when my dad took me shopping for my first car, he insisted I buy Japanese, because that way he knew I’d have something reliable and not likely to cause me a lot of trouble.
Poor Nathanael … I wonder how often the guys reminded him of his first reaction to Philip’s invitation? I wonder how hard it was for him to shift so suddenly, thinking how can anything good or decent or true or exciting or long lasting possibly come from that little backwater town of Nazareth?
He might have missed out altogether, if it hadn’t been for his friends suggesting he “come and see.” We might miss out, too, unless we are willing to “come and see” … because the only available transportation is still that leap of faith. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: 1 Samuel 3:1-20; John 1:43-51
Sermon: Who’s Calling, Please?, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Recognizing God’s call to us even from unlikely sources
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Rejoice Greatly, O My Soul, S. Karg-Elert; Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Introit: Praise to the Lord the Almighty, Paul Sjolund;
- Anthem: Here I Am Lord, Arr. Ovid Young; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Somebody’s Knocking At Your Door, Arr. William A. Fisher; Mark Woodward, soloist
- Postlude: Allegro, Gustav Merkel;
The Time Has Come!
Date: January 15, 2012
Title: “The Time Has Come!”
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Scripture: Psalm 62:5-12; Mark 1:14-20
Note this Introduction to the Gospel Lesson informs this week’s sermon:
Here Mark writes that Jesus dares to announce the “Gospel of God”, in direct contrast to the Gospel of Caesar, or of the Roman empire. Mark is making the claim here that Jesus’ story is the real Gospel, the real good news.
But Mark does not leave it at that in this text. He goes on to give Jesus a basic “keynote” speech, with four specific messages: (1), the time is fulfilled; (2), the Kingdom of God is at hand; (3), repent; and (4), believe in this Gospel.
As you probably know, the New Testament was written in Greek. In it we find two different words for “time”. There is the word chronos – which means “chronological time”, the everyday kind of time. And then there is the word kairos – which means the “urgent, present moment, the time beyond time, God’s time.”
In the Gospels, Jesus always refers to that second kind of time – the kairos time, when God’s Kin-dom is fulfilled here on earth; when God is at the center of all life; and when we are filled with God’s love.
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When my oldest daughter was trying to decide where she would go to college, I encouraged her to think big, to look at all her options and then go where she felt called to go. We traveled all around the United States in her junior year of high school, visiting all kinds of universities until she finally settled on Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts.
The year she was to enter Mt. Holyoke her sister and I traveled with Sarah to the east coast. We came early so we could do a little sight seeing and have a bit of a family vacation since none of us had ever seen much of New England before.
The first morning of our trip, Sarah and I were up and ready to go, but Kate was having a hard time getting out of bed. We had taken a late flight in from Portland to Hartford, Connecticut, and Kate was getting increasingly grumpy with every attempt Sarah or I made to jolly her out of bed. Finally, in exasperation, she cried out, “It’s not so bad for the two of you – you have been here before, so you’re used to the time change!”
Of course we have yet to let her live that down! It seems that sometimes “time” is a relative term. And what I may understand to the time may not be at all what you understand or experience.
Let me take you back now to another time. It was the night of April 3, 1968, and there were tornado warnings and torrential rains were falling in Memphis, Tennessee that night. Because of the bad weather, only a handful of folks had turned out to support Martin Luther King, Jr in his call for the city’s sanitation workers to go out on strike. Just three weeks earlier, 14,000 people had come to hear King speak in the same place. Nonetheless, when Dr. King took the podium that night, he didn’t seem concerned about the size of the crowd. And he began by talking a little bit about timing.
King spoke about some of the close calls he had already endured, and then went on to say:
“When I got into Memphis, some began to say – given the talk about the threats against me – what might happen to me here? Well… I don’t know what will happen now; we’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now, because I have been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind.
Like anybody I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now; I just want to do God’s will… So I’m happy tonight! I’m not worried about anything! I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the coming of the Lord!”
We all know what happened next. At 6:01 the following evening, Dr. King was assassinated right there in Memphis. He was 39 years old.
Today, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. as a prophet, a social activist, a reformer, and a change agent. We also remember him as a disciple of Christ and a child of God, just like us. Dan Clenedenin, in his essay, “the Time Has Come” makes this observation:
“Part of King’s many-faceted genius was his recognition that chronos – mere “clock time” -ordinary time, if you will – the passage of days nad weeks and years… no matter how long or short, no matter how trivial or important… that kind of time is no match for kairos time – the unique and opportune moment of God’s visitation.”
I believe that is why King could say that longevity – the length of life – is not the first priority for his life, or for ours. Indeed, longevity alone can be a sad substitute for a decisive choice made at a critical moment, however short or long the time.
In the Gospel text we read this morning, Mark has Jesus lifting up the kairos moment when he says “the time has come… the Kingdom of God is near”. Jesus announces the good news of God by inviting Simon and his brother Andrew into ministry – into the recognition that the clock had ticked over from chronos into kairos time. Jesus tells them that they are at a critical juncture, that they have been offered a divine appointment. And that while we might yet yawn at chronos, forgetting what day of the week it is, we can hardly ignore kairos and its urgent call to a fundamental reorientation in each of our lives.
It always amazes me, to see the response of Simon, his brother Andrew, James and John. There is little evidence to suggest that any of these four were extraordinarily good or righteous men. There is no overtly obvious reason why Jesus chooses them as disciples.
Indeed, there is little to distinguish first four disciples from their neighbors and friends, except perhaps for their ability to let go. They had the ability to let go of preconceived notions, and agendas and lifelong expectations; the ability to let go of their preoccupation with the everyday – with the chronos time we all know so very well.
And in letting go, they had the ability to hear God calling, to recognize when the time has come to respond to that insistent whisper or that nagging suggestion that there is room in this life for something more. Someone else put it this way:
“Letting go can be said to be the essence of the spiritual life, the heart of spiritual practice. It is when we are no longer full of opinions and expectations that we are truly receptive; able to hear God’s voice crying in our wilderness, able to see God’s light shining in our darkness.”
If you were in a Roman Catholic church this morning, and looked at the front of your bulletin, just under today’s date, you might find these words…”Second Sunday in Ordinary Time”. Ordinary time … in the Catholic tradition, it is these weeks between Christmas and Lent, when there are no major feast days or festivals, when the glitter and glitz has died down and the celebrations have been put away for another year. This is “ordinary time”… or is it?
Going to get the baby out of the manger, we suddenly realize it is no longer a cute little baby we have on our hands. Now we have the full implications of the adult Jesus, asking us to take what love we received in Bethlehem and use it to make life-altering decisions. Because the time has come.
And isn’t that just the way it goes with God? As Barbara Brown Taylor writes:
“Over and over, God’s call to us means pushing aside old boundaries, embracing outsiders, giving up the notion that there is not enough of us to go around. We may resist; we may even lose our tempers, but the call of God is insistent…
God’s calling keeps after us, keeps calling us by name, until finally we step over the lines we have drawn for ourselves and discover a whole new world on the other side.”
So what is it that will move us today from chronos to kairos? What is it that will create greatness in our midst? You may say, “I am no Martin Luther King, Jr”… and the world is so vast, its problems so huge. Injustice and racism are still so prevalent, even right here in Portland. And I am so small in comparison.
And yet, I ask you – whoever decides at an early age to become an icon of social justice, a prophet of world-class change, a martyr for love? I think when Simon, Andrew, James and John leave their nets to fish with Jesus, they have no idea just what God is inviting them into. They simply know the time has come to follow. Again, in Taylor’s words:
“The call of God is insistent, and whenever we limit who we will be to other people, or who we will let them be for us, God gets to work, rubbing out the lines we have drawn around ourselves, and calling us into the limitless country of God’s love.
We may well formulate new limits and draw new lines, but none of them last very long… Because once God has called us out there is no going back… God never calls us back behind our lines.”
Dr. King once commented that “Evil will not be driven out; it can only be crowded out…through the explosive power of something good.” When together we notice the atmospheric shift from chronos to kairos; when we hear God calling us to leave whatever nets contain our everyday, ordinary lives, we embrace the power of something good. Something good like God’s reign of justice and peace, or God’s promise of wholeness, or God’s presence of grace. And in so doing, we become a part of that which crowds out evil in favor of good.
It was an ordinary day just like any other when Rosa Lee Parks discovered a moment of God’s kairos – an opportunity she had to choose risk over regret, and urgency over complacency. In her autobiography she writes:
“I was not old then, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was only 42. And the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”
Sometimes the kairos moment is not all that different from a thousand moments of chronos before, when all of a sudden, we find ourselves too tired of giving into the status quo. We find ourselves too tired of giving in to our resignation that the world is not as it should be; too tired of giving in to hopelessness or despair; too tired of giving in to apathy or complacency. And all of a sudden, chronos becomes kairos just like that.
The time has come, my friends, to let go. Because you have nothing to lose but your life the way it has been. And let me tell you… there is lots more life where that came from! Thanks be to God! Amen.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Mark 1:14-20; Psalm 62:5-12
Sermon: The Time Has Come, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: This is the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday celebration; focus will be on social justice and the imperative Christians face to work toward equality and justice.
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: Bell Prelude, J. Clokey; Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: Praise His Holy Name, Keith Hampton; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: Precious Lord, Take My Hand, Thomas A. Dorsey; Benjamin Bell, soloist
- Postlude: Toccata (Symphonie #5), C. M. Widor; Jonas Nordwall, organist
Out of Chaos
Date: January 8, 2012
Title: Out of Chaos
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M. L. Pritchard
I am wondering this morning … just what do you suppose is the “best seat” in this house? If this were a theater, it would easy to answer that question. The “best seat in the house” would be close to the front, but not right on top of the orchestra. You wouldn’t want to sit in the very front row, where you had to look up and get a crick in your neck. You probably wouldn’t want to sit on center stage, either – unless of course you’re harboring a secret desire to perform!
But what about here? Is the best seat in the house the one way in the back, where you can be anonymous and nearly invisible? Or is it perhaps a seat on the aisle, in case you need to make a hasty exit – you know, the sermon gets too boring, or something like that. Or maybe, the best seat in this house is one smack dab in the middle, where you are surrounded by friends, where you feel the loving community all around you.
I’ve got to tell you, my friends – the truth is, you all are sitting in the “best seat in the house” today. In fact, we all are sitting there, all the time. Because the truth is, we are sitting in the lap of God! That is what Baptism is all about. It is an on-going invitation for us to find ourselves seated in the lap of God.
I believe it is time for us to recognize that truth, to recognize and understand that truth as Ralph Waldo Emerson puts in these words: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Within us – there, where we meet God and God meets the world through us. Within us – there, where the Spirit resides, calling us out of whatever chaos we inhabit, or experience, or even cause to happen.
What lies behind us – you know, in that old year, that musty long-ago, nearly forgotten 2011. And what lies before us – in this newly born year, this little upstart of 2012 – all that are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
How great it is that today’s Scriptures begin “in the beginning”, with the very act of creation itself. You remember how the story goes…out of chaos creation begins. It is out of chaos that God’s Spirit moves, and that God’s loving energy brings forth … pretty much everything.
Now I don’t know about you, but I am not always a great fan of chaos. It is unsettling f those of us who like to imagine we have control over our lives. It is uncomfortable for those of us who pretend to be in charge, even in some small way. And chaos … it’s just so uncontrollable, so unexpected, and let’s face it, downright messy.
But chaos is also so full of promise, when we remember that it was out of chaos that God created the universe. And it is out of chaos that we might unleash our own creative genius, even today.
You undoubtedly have heard of “chaos theory.” In recent years, Chaos Theory has had a lasting effect on science, leading many to believe that 20th century science will be known primarily for just these three theories: relativity, quantum mechanics, and chaos.
Agents of chaos show up everywhere around the world, from the currents of the ocean to the flow of blood, from the branches of trees to the effects of air turbulence. But what exactly is Chaos Theory? Someone else put it this way: “The name comes from the fact that the systems this theory describes are apparently disordered. But Chaos Theory is really about finding the underlying order in apparently random data.”
Finding the underlying order in apparently random data … I like that image! That is something I can find comforting, encouraging, maybe even a little freeing, as it suggests that there might be more to my life, more to the world, more to this present moment and even more to the future than at first meets my eye. And it helps me to understand how I might join God in the ongoing dance of creating “out of chaos.”
The first true experimenter in Chaos Theory was actually a meteorologist by the name of Edward Lorenz. In 1961, he was working on the problem of weather prediction. He had a computer set up, with a set of 12 equations to model the weather, to theoretically predict what the weather might be.
One day, Lorenz wanted to see a particular sequence again. To save time, he started in the middle of the sequence, instead of the beginning. He entered the number off his printout and left the computer to run. When he came back an hour later, the sequence had evolved in unexpected ways. Instead of the same pattern developed previously, it had diverged from the pattern, and ended up significantly different. It took Lorenz a while, but eventually he figured out what had happened.
The computer stored the numbers in the equations to six decimal places. To save paper, Lorenz only asked it to print out three decimal places. In the original sequence, the number was .506127 (pay attention, there may be a quiz later); and Lorenz had only typed the first three digits, .506.
By all conventional wisdom of the time, this should have worked. He should have gotten a sequence very close to the original one. Most scientists consider themselves lucky to get measurements with accuracy to three decimal places. Surely the fourth and fifth, impossible to measure using reasonable methods, cannot have a huge effect on the outcome of any experiment!
Yet Lorenz proved this wrong, with an effect which came to be known as the “butterfly effect,” the suggestion that the flapping of a single butterfly’s wings could produce a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere which over time could contribute to what the atmosphere actually does. So maybe there is some underlying pattern, some creative genius at work in the seemingly random experiences of chaos!
It is a sudden Gospel jump we make, from baby Jesus just two weeks ago, to the 30-year old standing in the River Jordan today. And Mark tells the story of Jesus’ baptism as if Jesus sees the crowd and just decides to get in line with all the other broken and damaged ones needing God’s grace just like us. Mark tells the story as if Jesus recognizes the chaos all around him and decides to make something of it, to find the underlying patterns of love and hope in the midst of the seemingly random experiences of human life. Perhaps we could the same.
You may have heard about Madonna Badger recently. She is an advertising executive in New York City. She is also a woman who knows first hand about chaos, for it was her two parents and her three daughters who perished together in a house fire on Christmas Eve. At her children’s memorial service this week, Madonna Badger reflected on chaos and creation in this way:
“People everywhere – including me – wonder ‘Why? Why did this happen, and why my children, and why my parents, and why now?’ But nothing will bring my babies back, or my parents, or the life I had … Here’s the one thing I know which is not a mystery: that there is no power greater on this Earth than love. And that is what is going to keep Lily and Sarah and Grace with us forever.
In all this, in all this incomprehensible loss and chaos, all I can hang onto is that love is everything. And God, as I choose to call my higher power, is love. So, God is love and God is everything.
I have been asked a million times, ‘How can you do this, how are you talking, how are you surviving?’ Because when I used to hear about people losing a child, or if a child got very, very sick, I would say, ‘I could never survive that. I could never live with that. I could never, ever, ever live through losing my babies.’
But here I am. Here are all of us. Because Lily and Sarah and Grace live in my heart now, as do my parents. I was a daughter and a mother, and I still intend to be both, so I can make my girls proud and carry them forward in love.”
This morning Jesus is inviting us to join him in a baptism of love. Jesus is inviting us to carry forward God’s love, which somehow brings order to the seemingly random chaos of the world. Because it is out of chaos that creation begins. And it is out of chaos that redemption is offered. And it is out of chaos that life is lived as love carries us all forward.
Karl Barth, famous and sometimes controversial Swiss theologian, was a great thinker, a prolific writer, and a sought-after professor at several leading European universities. On one occasion, Barth was confronted by a reporter who wanted him to give a brief summary of his twelve thick volumes on systematic theology.
Now Barth could have given that reporter an impressive intellectual reply. He could have offered a profound dissertation. He did not. Instead, he simply replied, summing up his deep, impressive theological works with these words: “Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”
Out of chaos … it all begins. Amen.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Join us this week for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Genesis 1:1-5
Sermon: Out of Chaos, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Using the chaos of our lives/world to create in God’s image
This Week’s Music
- Prelude: In Thee is Joy, J. S. Bach; Jonas Nordwall, organist
- Anthem: In the Beginning from The Creation, F. J. Haydn; The Chancel Choir, Erick Lichte, conductor
- Offertory: O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion, G. F. Handel; Eva Uherek-Cummins, soloist
- Postlude: Fugue in G Minor, J. S. Bach; Jonas Nordwall, organist
What Did You Get for Christmas?
Date: December 25, 2011
Title: “What Did You Get for Christmas?”
Scripture: Psalm 98; John 1:1-14
Preaching: The Rev. Donna M.L. Pritchard
Christmas is a time for memories, it seems. It is a time when memories surface, whether we will them to or not, whether we want them to or not. So this week I’ve been remembering Christmases I’ve known – like the one when I was still in high school and my sisters and I surprised our parents with airplane tickets for them to take a trip to southern California. Or the one when my flight out of Denver was cancelled because of a blizzard, and I made it onto a plane to Salt Lake City just before the airport was closed for three days. Or the one when I was six years old and we got our first puppy from the pound.
Among all my memories of childhood Christmases is one which you may recall as well. It is the memory of meeting up with friends the day after the holiday, when invariably, the question would be asked, “What did you get for Christmas?”
I think that is a great question for all of us this morning, this Christmas morning…what did you get, what did I get for Christmas? Let’s see… you may remember a few Sundays ago when I shared my dismay that Christmas falls this year on a Sunday. You may recall how I said that my family always opens presents on Christmas morning.
So while it is really delightful to be here with you today (thank you for coming!), I just couldn’t quite give up that whole present-opening thing. So this morning we are going to open a few together, to see just what did we get for Christmas?
In the first box we find… goodness. We got goodness for Christmas! Not just the kind of goodness that puts us on Santa’s “nice” list. Not just the kind of goods that lets us live together as family and friends. Our first Christmas gift today is the gift of God’s goodness.
God’s goodness has more to do with faithfulness than with sentimentality. It is the kind of goodness which is expressed in unconditional love, the kind of goodness which keeps promises and builds trust. Nan Merrill, in her book Psalms for Praying paraphrases the 98th Psalm in this way:
O sing to the Beloved a new song, for Love has done marvelous things!
By the strength of your indwelling Presence,
We too, are called to do great things.
And South African President Nelson Mandela once commented that:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we
are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
God in Jesus Christ give us all the gift of goodness.
So what else did we get for Christmas? In the second box we find beauty. We got beauty for Christmas. Not just the kind of beauty we see in twinkling lights or festive bows. Not just the kind of beauty we recognize on the surface of people or places or things. Our second Christmas give today is the gift of God’s beauty.
God’s beauty is not hard to find. All you have to do is look around and it fairly jumps right out at you – especially here in this warm place, surrounded by loving people, uplifted by incredible music. It is not difficult to spot God’s beauty in the green of the trees, the brilliance of a starlit night, the wonder of the renewing earth.
And yet this Christmas gift of beauty goes even deeper than all of that. It is the beauty of creation. And the beauty of redemption. It is the beauty of birth, and the beauty of death, and the beauty of resurrection all rolled into one holy child.
I remember well the card I received from a friend when I was pregnant with my first child. On the front of the card was a picture of a delighted person exclaiming, “A baby?! Your life will never be the same!” And inside was a picture of a house, strewn with toys and blankets, bits of paper and pieces of clothing, with this caption, “And neither will your floors!”
It is true, isn’t it? A baby enters in and changes things in anyone’s life. A baby enters in and threatens the status quo. King Herod knew that. Sitting in Jerusalem with all the military clout of the Roman empire to back him up, Herod knew how dangerous babies can be.
And yet, this baby – dangerous as he is – is also all about beauty. The kind of beauty which changes things, maybe even everything. Because this baby also changes us, right along with them. Mary Oliver puts it this way in one of her poems:
As for life,
I’m humbled, I’m without words sufficient to say
How it has been hard as flint, and soft as a spring pond,
Both of these, over and over.And long pale afternoons besides,
And so many mysteries
Beautiful as eggs in a nest, still unhatchedThough warm and watched over
By something I have never seen –
A tree angel, perhaps,
Or a ghost of holiness…
The gift of beauty… what could be better this Christmas?
But we have one more box to open. What else did we get for Christmas? In the third box we find Truth. Not just the kind of truth recognized in mathematics or science. Not just the kind of truth which is celebrated in literature or art. Not just the kind of truth which can be quantified, objectified, certified. This Christmas gift is the gift of God’s Truth.
God’s Truth is the kind of truth which brings us back to our essential selves. It is Truth with a capital “T”, which stretches beyond the wonder of the mind to encompass the imagination of the heart. It is the kind of truth which Dietrich Bonhoeffer sees when he describes Christmas with these words:
When God in Jesus Christ claims space in the world -
Even space in a stable
Because “there was no other place in the inn” -God embraces the whole reality of the world
In this narrow space
And reveals its ultimate foundation.
Several years ago when I was serving our church in Silverton, we had the usual Christmas pageant, very similar to the one some of us enjoyed here last night. We had shepherds and sheep, angels, Mary and Joseph, even a donkey and a few wise men. But then we had an unexpected addition.
One of the 3 year old boys came to dress rehearsal and announced, “I’m going to be a fireman”. While I tried to explain to him that we didn’t have any firemen in this play, but that we had a number of great costumes for sheep or angels or shepherds, Luke simply looked at me and rather politely, but very firmly replied, “But I am going to be a fireman.” Exasperated, I looked around for help. And was rescued when a very wise woman knelt by that child and said, “We don’t have any firemen, but how about a fireman’s dog?”
Well, Luke thought that would be just fine, so his mother spent the afternoon sewing black spots onto one of the sheep’s outfits. And the Christmas Dalmatian stole the show. Partly because it was new and different. But largely because I think that “fireman’s dog” helped us all to remember that Christmas only happens when we are willing to believe in all of God’s truth, from the wonders of our minds to the imaginations of our hearts.
God is with us – right here, right now – just as we are in this very moment. And God will continue to be with us in the next moment, the next moment, and the next. That is the Truth with a capital “T” which is found in a manger and fulfilled in an empty tomb – for Jesus, and for us. Ted Loder sums it all up in his prayer for Christmas:
O God, at last I discern, even in this dark glass of finitude,
That the deeper mystery is goodness – not evil in all its demonic poses,
Or all its grinding banalities;The deeper mystery is beauty – not nagging ugliness;
Truth – not falsehood followed however long.The mystery is goodness, beauty, truth:
Because it is you who, above all, beyond all, keeps breakable promises…
And your grace is the greatest mystery of all. Amen.
Sunday, Christmas Day, 2011
Join us this week on Christmas Day for worship at 10:30.
Scripture: Isaiah 52:7-10; John 1:1-14
Sermon: What did you get for Christmas?, Rev. Donna Pritchard preaching
Focus: Embracing the presence of Christ from here on out
